Geek of the Week: Brady Russell, Creator of the Webcomic Eat the Babies

Part of what makes webcomics so interesting is that there are literally no boundaries to what you can create. There is no “demographic” or “model” you have to fit into, you just have to be able to tell a story that is important to you.

Eat the Babies by Brady Russell is a perfect example of this. Brady is a Philadelphia guy who has created a comic that is very unique and has to read to believed. It is the story of a walking, talking television as it explores the world around it and occasionally gives us a lesson in economics. Like I said, unique.

Brady was nice enough to do an email interview for Geekadelphia to talk about his comic, how he works and how great it is being an artist in Philly.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m an organizer and activist who has fought the good fight in six different states, but I arrived in Philadelphia in 2005. First of all and foremost, though, I have always wanted to be a maker-of-things (writer, artist, comics, etc). I had this idea in college, though, that I needed to go out and have some life experiences that weren’t writing and art before I really pursued those things (not really sure that was a great idea now, but it’s the road I took). That’s why I went into the organizing life. Along the way, I have written several novels that sit on my hard drive.

So, last year I decided to get really serious about using the Internet to just get my creative work out there on my own and – since I had already done some mini-comics at that point – I sold myself on the idea of doing a webcomic. I had always wanted to do more comics. I wanted to get better at drawing comics and I really felt then (and feel now) that webcomics have a bright future.

I set myself a little goal: if I could fill the rest of this mostly full sketchpad I had with comics, then I would really commit myself to the webcomic idea. Then I said that if I could draw 100 comics, I would launch the site. I set the goal of getting them done before the end of 2010. I didn’t quite make it but I got close enough to start working on the site and buy the URL and etc. EatTheBabies.com went live on February 15th, 2010, and I haven’t been late on an update yet.

Where did the idea for Eat the Babies come from? I mean, why a walking, talking television?

Both the title and the TV itself kind of come from the same place, though I can’t really tell you what that place is. I don’t think I’m the first to do draw a living television. At the least, I know lots of people have drawn characters that had TVs for heads. I know I first drew TV sometime when I was in Wisconsin. I was drawing it all over the place there for a while. I really, really liked drawing it. I also did this screenprint of TV yelling “I WILL EAT YOUR BABIES.” I still have some of those.

There was no real organized thought to it. It was just this image that kept coming back to me again and again. I have always been kind of a hater of television so that’s probably part of it, but I also think there’s something about the fact that TV has this blank screen that the reader can stare into. Maybe it allows them to put their face in there or, maybe, more nefariously, TV personifies the apocryphal void that peers back.

I’m not really sure, but no other image has stuck with me quite like TV has. So he became my comic character. So I just started drawing these really simple, sketchy strips and the idea evolved and TV became a lot more like an alien exploring Earth than a menacing figure (though he is not, by any means, always nice).

And then the title honestly just came out of that screenprint I had made. Nothing else was really grabbing me and I kept coming back to variations on the “I will eat your babies” theme. I think there is this idea that TVs kind of consume the minds of children, and I think people identify TVs with that. So it made sense, in that way, though honestly the strips hardly ever make reference to TV shows or the fact that TV is a walking talking household appliance. Sometimes, but not often.

How do you go about creating a strip? Are you a digital or traditional artist?

The biggest part of creating each strip is figuring out what kernel of an idea guides it. I really like to base Eat The Babies strips on concepts in economics, though it is hard to do and sometimes what seems like a good idea comes out really forced. If you read the blog portion under the strip, I like to provide links to whatever I read or saw that inspired the strip. Hopefully that is interesting for readers.

So I get the kernel of an idea and then I have to find the ending. This may or may not be obvious, but I really, really try to avoid the rimshot/punchline final panel. I want the humor in Eat the Babies to pervade the strip. More in its general oddness than in building the tension to a punchline. I think this makes it hard for people to relate to the strip. That worries me, but I want to explore other ways to make comics enjoyable and maybe happen onto something new along the way.

As to how I draw them: I am 99% traditional. I pencil in graphite then I ink it (either with a brush or a crowquill) and erase off the pencils. I add the spot-color with markers (mostly). Then I touch it up a bit in Photoshop, but I’m not very good with Photoshop, so I don’t do much. I also do all the lettering behind. That’s really important to me. No one has told me it isn’t readable yet, but if anyone thinks it is I hope they will.

What does the future hold for Eat the Babies?

The plan for Eat the Babies has always been for it to broaden to serve as an ebook publishing platform for my books. I haven’t been in a big rush about developing this because I need the readership to grow enough to make offering ebooks credible, but it is coming. The whole time I have been working on EattheBabies.com I have also been writing my next novella, PLATO: THE FLYING SAUCER PHILOSOPHER. It’s about a high-school boy whose girlfriend breaks up with him and how he pins the break up on his best friend’s power to turn into a flying saucer.

Beyond that, I also hope to maybe, maybe, maybe take one month and do a daily comic for that whole month (and go back to twice weekly afterward). It will be a kind of “Grand Opening” for Eat the Babies, with online promotion, webadvertising. All that. I’ll break from ETB tradition so far and do a story – a sort of “Origin of TV” kind of thing. Maybe. If I do it, I think I’ll do it in August 2012 and Philadelphia itself will be something of a character in that story.

What’s the best part of being a cartoonist in Philadelphia?

Easy, The Philly Comix Jam. This group is more than just a social scene. The Philadelphia Alternative Comic-Con, Retrofit Comics and Secret Prison all have ties to the Philly Comix Jam. This group is cool and they are making things happen. If you’re drawing comics in Philadelphia and you aren’t hitting Manny Brown’s on the last Tuesday of the month, you are missing out on getting to know a very cool, very supportive crew.

Additionally, Eat the Babies is a very urban strip. TV can show up anywhere (he has even shown up inside video games), but mostly it is a strip about a walking talking TV wandering around the city. Mostly, that city is Philadelphia. I try really hard to provide readers with real context for my strips. To do this, I often draw from photos I have taken of places in the city or I just go outside and sit and draw what I see and then put the latest strip in that setting.

I think Philadelphia provides lots of varied and interesting backgrounds and settings for telling little stories or illustrating funny ideas. Many times, just looking at a piece of the city and picturing TV and one of his friends walking around there is enough to give me the idea I need for a strip.

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Eat the Babies updates every Tuesday and Friday. Check it out at Eatthebabies.com